Welcome to Pass the Chalk

Welcome to Pass the Chalk

Monday, July 16, 2012

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Dear Readers,

Welcome to our blog! We’re so excited to offer this new forum where we’ll be posting commentary on news events, sharing on-the-ground stories from the communities where we work, and engaging in candid discussion and debate about the biggest issues surrounding education today. Pass The Chalk is a blog for everyone, not just members of the Teach For America community or education policy wonks.

I’ll be one of many contributors who will be blogging regularly, along with our staff members, alumni, corps members, students, parents, teachers, and local leaders and advocates.; We hope to add our voices to a vibrant online conversation about one of the most pressing social justice issues of our time.

There’s a robust discussion about education that’s increasingly taken place online and on social media, and too often it focuses on the negative, oversimplifies issues, and creates false dichotomies, thus failing to advance our collective learning and understanding.

We’ve created this blog with the goal of helping to shape a more positive and productive discussion about how to achieve the goal we all agree on—the goal of a country where every child has the opportunity to receive an excellent education. We need to hear more from the legions of people who are working for progress every day in classrooms and statehouses and advocacy organizations. We want to share our observations about the biggest challenges facing our kids, what works, and what doesn’t.

This won’t be the place to hear the “official TFA line.” In fact, you will see from these posts that there is no official TFA line or monolithic view. As you might expect from a community of some 40,000 corps members, alumni and staff, we have a wide array of opinions and disagree about many things, including the role of Teach For America itself in achieving our goals. We think this diversity of thought is a good thing, and that we all have much to gain from sharing our perspectives and grappling with tough questions.

With a community this large, no one can speak for all of us so we trust our bloggers to speak for themselves, own their opinions, and engage thoughtfully and respectfully with others.

Please share your thoughts and feedback with us at blogfeedback@teachforamerica.org. Thanks so much for reading! We hope you’ll come back regularly to check in on our latest stories.

Best,

Wendy

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